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PauletteWeil OppertFink

Paulette Weill Oppert Fink joined the French Resistance to fight the Nazis, but her work to save refugees didn’t end with the war. Paulette married Yves Oppert in 1934, and served briefly as a Red Cross nurse during the war. Yves was conscripted into the French Army and captured, but after his escape, the pair fled to the unoccupied zone of France with their two daughters and joined the Resistance, hiding Jewish children and helping them escape. After Yves was tortured and killed in 1944, Paulette continued working with the Resistance and the Jewish Brigade. When the war ended, she smuggled Jewish refugees into British Palestine and worked with the Joint Distribution Committee to open eleven orphanages for child survivors, traveling often to America to raise funds. In 1954 she married American businessman Israel Fink and settled in Minneapolis, where she served as national chair of the UJA Women’s Division for three years and inspired her husband to take on Jewish leadership roles as well.